Åland

Off the southern Swedish coast, the island of Åland provides another opportunity to study the progression of comb morphology across the pre-Viking/Viking-Age transition. To paint a general picture of the pre-Viking corpus, a sample of 98 well-dated early 8th-century combs from around Åland includes both Type 5Vorformen and examples of Type 2b (Callmer 1998, 475). In addition, a number of multi-period sites on the island help establish a sequence. At the Vendel-period and Viking-Age cemetery of Långängsbacken, combs of Type 5 have been recovered from mound graves dated (by find association) to the 9th century and before, while Type 6 combs have been recovered from 10th-century burials (Kivikoski 1980, 35-7). Similarly, at the cemetery of Kvarnbacken (also on Åland), which was in use between the 7th century and the end of the first millennium, fragmentary examples of Types 5 and 6 were recovered from graves dated to the Vendel and Viking Ages (Kivikoski 1963).